California’s Independent System Operator is calling on residents across the state to reduce electricity use between 4 and 9 p.m. again Tuesday. It’s the seventh straight day of "flex alerts" prompted by the heat wave. The ISO said voluntary reductions in power use can help prevent rolling blackouts.
Kevin Geraghty, Chief Operating Officer of San Diego Gas & Electric, joined Midday Edition on Tuesday to talk about why California’s power grid has not been able to keep up with energy demand during the heat wave without flex alerts. The interview below has been lightly edited for clarity.
California is expected to approach an all-time high for single day energy usage. Can you put that into context for us, given our current circumstances?
Geraghty: It's been a long heat wave event, and we expect today will likely be the peak for demand across the state and across the entire west. So to put it in perspective, the all time high by the California Independent System Operator happened in 2017 and it was 50,117 (megawatts), I believe. Today, right now, the forecast is 51,145 — to give you an idea that's actually a pretty significant bump over historical high.
Why hasn't California's power grid been able to meet demand during this heat wave without Flex Alerts?
Geraghty: I think Flex Alerts and conservation have always been part of West-wide heat events, and I think that's really the perspective here. This isn't your local utility just having hot weather, it's every utility pretty much west of the Rocky Mountains, and so we all work together to share that energy across even state lines to keep everybody's grid connected. And so, whether it's Flex Alerts or just any other messaging to conserve power is really the best way to help out our state in the entire West.
What can you tell us about work being done to increase the grid's capacity to meet future energy needs as the state moves towards mandates away from natural gas and to an even greater reliance on electricity?
Geraghty: New resources are being added, whether that's solar, increasing our installations of batteries — California leads probably the world in battery installations, and most of that has been installed in the last couple of years. Additionally, we're enhancing the demand response programs offered at the state, so for a customer hearing again about a heat wave event that strains our grid, it probably sounds like a repeat, but actually our state is in dramatically better shape than we were two years ago.
We're in the seventh straight day of Flex Alerts — can SDG&E and the ISO tell whether people in San Diego are using less power and following these Flex Alerts?
Geraghty: We absolutely can, and I can tell you, Flex Alerts or any call for conservation has always been part of West-wide heat events like we're experiencing right now. So not only in California is the plea being made to reduce consumption, that's happening in most of the states in the West at the same time. The result of that is it does make a very big difference, as the states are able to work with one another, share resources as they become available, and make sure everybody keeps their lights on. Thus far, this is a historic and certainly anomalous event. There have not been any rotating outages, and I think that's remarkably good. We have another couple of tight days to get through here, customers do have fatigue after multiple days, and so not only can we see the response by customers, we can actually see their fatigue as well. I really encourage every customer to please find ways to change your energy demand between 4:00 and 10:00 p.m.
Why does our electrical supply face such intense strain during a heat wave — don't we have other energy sources available?
Geraghty: There's energy sources available to meet that demand, but this is at that record extreme level. Really, almost all the states are facing — at that same time — that same extreme level. Usually when you think about whether it's within our state, typically you'll see some different temperature profiles, so power sharing can kind of move north and south throughout the state. Sometimes, the Northwest has needs -they had needs a few weeks ago and California was helping the Northwest; the Southwest had some needs a month or so ago. This is a coincidental heat wave affecting most of the West, and that is always the scenario that really puts the entire Western grid in a challenging position.
The Flex Alerts are to prevent rolling blackouts, has SDGE been forced to cut power at all during this heat wave?
Geraghty: We have not, we have not had a single rotating outage to this point. We haven't even had to warn customers that there's the potential for it. Mostly, that is due to everybody's great response on conserving energy, but then also the availability of resources, whether it's power plants, solar, wind, batteries, all that performance has also been very good and different from 2020 and even last year when we had a really tight window, we don't have any large fires in the state that are threatening transmission lines. When those transmission lines that help us share power throughout the west are threatened by fires, that's when the situation can become even more difficult — so we have not yet faced any of those situations.
How far in advance does SDG&E know when it's going to have to implement a rolling blackout?
Geraghty: When we think about rotating outages, we're coordinating not only with all the other utilities in the state, we're coordinating with the California Independent System Operator, the Governor's office, and even operators around the West. So all of us are trying to get as close as possible to make sure everybody has power without having a rotating outage. The window can typically be a couple of hours, because all of a sudden you could think you're in really good shape and then maybe a transmission line has a problem or a power plant has a problem, or sometimes you think it's going to be really very tight in two hours, but then a power plant comes back or a transmission line you thought was threatened wasn't. So it can be fairly dynamic when we get in a West-wide and a statewide heat event like this, but typically it's going to be a couple of hours.
Are there any blackouts planned for today or the next few days because of the strain to the grid?
Geraghty: There's never any plan, no rotating outages are ever planned; our absolute plan is to avoid them. Today and tomorrow really are the peak and we're really asking customers to just double down on those conservation efforts. It's four hours, and it will make a huge difference. Don't run your pool pump, set your air conditioning up just a little bit, don't have your electric vehicle plugged in, and if you have any batteries that actually can pull power off the grid, we ask the customers, please don't charge them during that window as well. If we can stick to those things, we hope and expect to avoid rotating blackouts or rotating outages.
What factors does SDG&E take into account when a blackout is necessary? How do you choose the community that's affected and those that are not?
Geraghty: We actually file a process within the state that shows these are rotating outages. We start at the top of the list and we put customers into rotating outages until we can meet the requested reduction from the California Independent System Operator, and then we meet that, we stop and we hope to get through that hour and if we can stop there, great. Those customers then go to the bottom of the list for the next event, which we hope is years and years from now. If the very next hour is going to continue to be tight, we do that same process. We start down through the top of the list. We go down through the bottom of the list until we get through that hour. We look to avoid critical public safety features such as fire departments, police departments and hospitals from receiving any type of rotating outage.
What are some of the best ways consumers can reduce energy usage at a time like this?
Geraghty: Some of the simplest things are best. Turn off all your lights, make sure your windows are shut — especially if they're facing the sun. Raise your thermostat up just a couple of degrees, avoid washing clothes if you have an electric water heater. Even setting that down a little bit will help for a couple of hours. The really big things are the air conditioning. Do not run a pool pump if you have them, those are sneaky ways of really putting demand on the grid. Everybody wants to cool off, they run into the pool and they run their pool pump; please have that off. The two new big ones that we think about really are plug-in vehicles and batteries. We just ask you to wait, and not to charge those during those hours. Wait until after 10:00 when there'll be plenty of power for everybody.
